More Wisconsin Bigfoot News
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on January 24th, 2008
Farmington man ponders mystery tracks
TOWN OF FARMINGTON – Journalists, by nature, are typically a suspicious, cynical lot.
Taking everything with a grain of salt is our credo, embedded by life experience – especially in us old timers – that everything is not simply what it appears to be.
The old saying, “show me, I’m from Missouri” comes to mind here.
So, when Brode Powers from the town of Farmington called Tuesday to report some “very strange footprints on my property,” the first thoughts were: ‘OK, there must be a full moon coming.’
Brode Powers of the town of Farmington measures a huge track in his front yard in the town of Farmington Tuesday afternoon. It measured 28 inches.
But after checking out the story and seeing the footprints first hand, it must be reported: these are some very strange footprints.
Dare we say Bigfoot?
Powers is a 41-year-old UPS driver, living on a wooded, bucolic, 10-acre parcel of land on Shalom Drive with his wife and two, 20-pound cairn terriers of the licking persuasion.
A couple of weeks ago his wife, Katherine, mentioned she saw some funny tracks in the snow, but like many husbands, Brode dismissed it out of hand. He’s not now.
“I was clearing the driveway (Wednesday morning) and there they were,” he said.
Huge tracks cross the Powers front yard in the town of Farmington.
The prints – about 2 feet in length and spaced about 4 feet apart, measured in stride, from heel to toe – start on his neighbor’s adjoining parcel to the south and continue on to the front and past his home. What’s really surprising is that the prints are almost linear, like the, er, creature, was balancing a tightrope. Another puzzling aspect is that the prints track straight to a 7-foot tall archway he has on the property, but then instead of going through, go around.Al Dunn
GM Today Staff
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
From the one photograph shown with the human measuring the track, I really don’t get how a distance of “about 4 feet” can be said to exist between the two-feet-long tracks pictured.
The stride seems to be more in the range of a human who is dragging their feet or doubling their tracks than a giant unknown with huge feet.
The thing I notice about the prints are two things. One the stride is kinda short. The other is I don’t see any toe prints. But it could be a bigfoot, sasquatch or dare I say werewolf?
Four-foot stride my ass.
hey everyone very interesting new article the wisconsin sasquatch. those footprints in the snow are big & amazeing. i see investigation comeing along here. thanks bill green 🙂
They seem to come from a biped not a quadruped. Their spacing looks 2 feet long and not 4 feet as said. There is no toe demarcation. The snow seems puffy so they are unusually shallow to have been made by a 400+ pound animal. Possibly done by a person wearing bizzare snow shoes?
Ya umm, well his wife said she saw the tracks a few weeks ago so if they are that old the toe markings would have likely melted in the sun. Granted the measurement of 4 ft does not appear valid in the picture but that does not mean further down the track the stride grew. I admit the trail looks peculiar, like “it” was putting one foot in front of the other. If I were this guy I would watch out for a thief. If these are the 2nd set of tracks on his property I think more than likely his house is being cased by a burglar, and they are “tip toeing” in their own prints to avoid proper measurement by police. Just my 2 cents.
That is one thing that is not made clear in the story – was the particular set of tracks two weeks old or was what is in the photos a second set? My impression is that these tracks are two weeks old.
If they were two weeks old before being photographed then melt from the sun and wind erosion would have enlarged the tracks considerably and details such as toes and pads would be lost. My first thought was it was snowshoe track. Notice there is no close up of a single print. I agree, the “four foot” span between prints is simply not there it looks like two feet.
Single file prints are not necessarily indicative of anything either. I don’t walk that way, but I know some people who do some purposefully and other naturally.
Yes the prints are interesting and perhaps odd in their timing and placement. Wrath of the Real makes a valid point about someone walking around casing the house.
To be honest, my first impression here is of a medium-small animal (fox?) high-hopping along in soft snow. I have witnessed them doing this, when plowing through lose powder would have cost them more energy. This would almost explain the near lateral arrangement of the “tracks”.
Though, IF this had been the case, there would surely have been some other trace left, somewhere, perhaps on the more shallow snow of a cleared walkway. It would be interesting to vacuum some of the powder out of one of those impressions, to see what was at the bottom (fox paws, snowshoe marks, or feet with some really BIG toes? :)).
Yea, funny how the guy measuring the print is shin deep in snow, yet the “prints” are shallow. Silly.
I agree with Bill Green.
C’mon, guys – ““I was clearing the driveway (Wednesday morning) and there they were,” he said. Why would he be clearing the driveway of two-week old snow?
Those footprints are still mounded around the edges, not melted or even windblown – they appear brandy-new to me.
They are very linear, a common appearance in Bigfoot tracking, as opposed to spaced apart, as in ours. Try it in snow.
Why would a burglar try to disguise his footsteps – just their presence would be a tipoff, don’t you think?
Why would a small creature walk around a 7 foot archway?
And finally, isn’t “stride” measured from the heel of one footprint to the toe of the next one, as opposed to “step” length, from heel to heel? Looks like even more than 4 foot stride to me.
But the narrow footprint is unique, even strange.
Looks to me like, as was mentioned, a small animal was jumping through the deep snow, a squirrel or something like that. I also thought that these “tracks” were from Washington State.
Looks like someone with modern no tail snowshoes trying out their Christmas present.
I agree with everyone that those prints are certainly not 4 feet apart. But has anyone else noticed that whatever made those prints seems to be walking using only one leg?
There doesn’t seem to be a stride pattern, you would expect the footprints to be slightly off to one side of each other, but it doesn’t seem to be like that.
With nothing more to go on, I would put the odds at 25% on BF (or a werewolf); 25% for a burglar, or a hoaxer; 25% on the no-tail snowshoes; leaving 25% for a fox – or some other unidentified, small (about 20-pounds?), energetic, Cairn Terrier sized animal.
Ken MD, I’m of the same opinion; although I would not discard that the snow in that part of the man’s property is not too deep.
Let me be the first to say I have never used snowshoes. Looking at the second photo I would think it very difficult, especially with a snowshoe, to get one foot directly in front of the other. Maybe this could be done if the intention was to deceive.
Regarding high hopping of a fox. I have seen cats and dogs do this kind of movement through snow. Generally though they will do it for a short time and then just plow ahead for a while. Maybe fox or other wildlife would be different.
Regards
I think that high-hoping is called bounding. Some small dogs I have known (terriers) tend to use it exclusively in snow, for some reason. You are right, clash, larger dogs will alternately plow ahead, and bound.
Interesting tracks, everybody. Thanks, Loren.
I agree whoever made these has a very weird stride.
SEAROOM—LOL.
Don’t agree with you, but LOL.
The guy is up to his calfs in snow! If the big man walked through there would have been even deeper, more impressive holes left! I would guess Otters….bounding in a row!
bigfoot and cars. a perplexing subject to be sure. if the are reclusive then why cross in front of cars. if the dont care about being seen then why be reclusive.
perplexing till you realise a trait that is displayed by many different animal species on many different continents.
animals see man as dangerous. they tend to hide run or stay out of reach of man except in some anomalous behavior incidents or in cases of old predators attempting easy meals. take the same animals and same man and put the man in a vehicle and he isnt a man anymore. even if the animals see the man get into the vehicle and see the man in the vehicle they are no longer in fear only cautious of something new in their environment.
an example is wildlife photogs who follow the big cats of Africa. a man in a car isnt dangerous. they will sit on hoods and roofs of the car with the man in it. even in cases of mothers with young this holds true. even if there is no roof and they are face to face with the person the threat is not there. to them the occupant isnt a person but part of the vehicle.
have the man get out of the vehicle and he is automatically a threat again.
i believe some or all bigfoot seen nonchalantly walking up to cars or in front of them are reacting in the same way. to them the man disappears as soon as he enters the car.
I think a critical eye needs to be kept with these photos. Those marks in the snow could have been made by a lot of things other than a sasquatch. I think the linear nature is a very good indicator of these not coming from a large, bipedal creature as such an animal would simply not walk that way. It would be very odd as well as inefficient indeed for a creature displaying bipedalism to carefully place one foot in front of the other as it walked, keeping its feet perfectly faced forward, mind you. Also, two feet seems extremely large for the feet of a supposed 7 foot tall creature. Imagine a bipedal creature with feet about a quarter of its body length, walking with those unwieldy feet perfectly straight, one in front of the other in a line, and you get a fairly silly and unlikely image. I don’t know what made those tracks, but I am skeptical they were made by a Bigfoot.
Also, I’m just a little curious. Just what is the relevance of the fact that they have two cairn terriers of the “licking variety”? What does that even mean?
As some have already proposed, the tracks are of an animal hopping in the snow.
A biped would not have tracks directly in front of another but offset.
Unless of course they’re attempting to keep the prints that way, this very unnatural gait which would undoubtedly be difficult over any length of terrain.
If you don’t believe it then just walk across the floor and see for yourself.
It seems like we have another misidentification of the evidence.
Are there any overhead pictures of these prints?
If I saw these prints near my house I wouldn’t have bothered taking a picture at all.
Thought I’d point out that Farmington is in Washington, not Wisconsin…
I’m not going to say these tracks are from a BF, people have pointed out a number of difficulties, with stride length vs. print size, etc. But I don’t think we can say a large biped “would not” walk in such a way as to leave straight line, straight ahead tracks. We don’t walk that way, but if BF is real I don’t think it’s just a scaled-up version of us. Our bipedalism is made for a steady, striding walk on a firm, relatively flat and even surface. It’s much less efficient on loose substrates and steep, uneven ground. I think the BF has evolved a more generalist, “all terrain” bipedalism.
After reading all the posts and looking at the pictures again, it makes perfect sense, an animal hopping through the snow, fox, squirrel, rabbit, etc. – they couldn’t walk through it. It makes more sense than a biped or snowshoes. Although I indicated some people walk that way, it is usually purposeful, eg. hunters, army scouts etc. to reduce noise. But when they walk that way they are also moving slowly. A close up of an individual “track” would probably give an even better indication of what was going on – why didn’t they take a picture like that?
The mystery is melting, melting…
Hmmm, another thought, I wonder if BF’s feet act like snow shoes being so big. I have walked in snow shoes and it is not easy. I however have large flat feet myself measuring just under 15″ while I stand at 6’4 and 295 Lbs. I bet if my feet were wide enough I might be able to walk in snow and not sink in as deep as someone with a smaller foot. Nope I was wrong and now my feet are cold. I do find it humorous that “it” walked around a 7 ft archway but I guess if I were BF and was walking past a house that is a bit alien to my natural habitat I would likely walk as slow as possible to remain the stealthy master of the woods. I still think it was someone casing the joint. And what better way to avoid police detection than by dressing up in a monkey suit so, police will not take the reports of being spotted seriously.
I’m agreeing with Loren and Ann Unknown here.
From the snows we’ve had, and the appearance of the snow, it hasn’t been two weeks, those are fresh.
It could be a human, easily, though the tracks are very lined up for that.
I could take picks of rabbit tracks in the backyard that I could call bigfoot prints, along the lines of what Ann is saying, though the ones in Wisconsin I’m inclined to attribute to something larger, perhaps a mink.
Oh, and the guy isn’t knee-deep in the snow. He is kneeling on the ground.
How are you supposed to find cryptids, if you won’t -observe-?
Bob Arnebeck’s web page on Minks :
http://www.geocities.com/bobarnebeck/mink.htm
About halfway down the page, there is a illustration of a mink’s track way in snow. Minus the slide, there is a resemblance to the tracks in Farmington.
The Mink – A bane to cryptozoologist only rivaled by his friend, and ally – The Otter
It was suggested on another forum that the track looks as it someone wearing a pair of stilts such as used on construction sites when hanging drywall sheets, etc. leaves a track very similar, including the distinctive inline trackway…and one using a set of extenders like this would of course deflect their pathway to avoid an archway under 7′. That seems the most likely, but I’d much prefer it was BF.
I believe this Farmington is in Washington COUNTY Wisconsin. I live a few miles from there and have a friend that lives on Shalom Drive. We got 15 inches of light, fluffy snow on Monday night so the tracks are probably fresh.
I don’t know what made the tracks but I think it’s interesting that there was a ‘bearwolf’ sighting on Shalom a year or so ago if I remember right.
BearWolf! A-Ha! Now we would have narrow PAWS, on the ends of the lower legs, as an upright, BIPEDAL canine loped across the yard! Someone should check the nose end of those prints for claws, and better stay inside after dark!
I think if the stride is being measured from the the heel of one track, up to the toes of the other, then it’s possible it can measure around 4 feet. The snow looks powdery but who knows by this photo what the condition of the snow actually is. If it were a burglar scoping out the home before breaking in, unless he is really dumb, I don’t think he would creep around in the snow at all. Making steps that linear in the snow for acres I think would be tiring as hell for a person, and just weird! Not to mention hard to keep balance. I don’t know, my opinions, who knows what it is. Unless I’m there first hand I can’t speculate too much. But I think it’s worth keeping an eye on.
Burglars are dumb that is how they get caught. I am just saying there could be a thousand scenarios for the tracks to have been made and I agree, unless we were there we will likely never know. I almost prefer it that way. Gives me a reason to keep coming back 🙂